]]>The fact that political campaigns use social media to try and influence public opinion isn’t new: the “spin cycle” is no longer something that involves private calls to a few grizzled newspaper columnists or TV commentators — instead, there are teams of social-networking staffers working the spin on every conceivable platform. But we rarely get a glimpse inside these “war rooms” until long after the campaign is over.

In a recent research paper, journalism professor Daniel Kreiss got a look at some of the social machinery (PDF link) behind the 2012 campaigns of presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, based on interviews with senior staffers and insiders of both.

One thing that dramatically changed from the previous presidential election in 2008, Kreiss notes, was the influence of Twitter — which existed in 2008, but wasn’t really thought of as being an important tool for shaping public opinion. The Obama campaign’s digital director, Teddy Goff, said it was an afterthought at best:

“Goff could not remember the word Twitter being mentioned in new media department meetings in April through November 2008 and says the campaign ‘probably had some intern paste whatever we were putting on Facebook’ on the platform.”

The Twitter echo chamber

One of the conclusions of the paper is that Twitter in particular has turned what used to be a 24-hour news cycle — in which political operatives would try to spin the perception of news events for the next day’s newspaper or TV broadcast — into a two-hour news cycle that continually resets during a campaign, based on what the trending topics are on Twitter or what content is being shared on Facebook.

From a political and journalistic standpoint, one of the interesting conclusions that Kreiss comes to is that both campaigns took advantage of the fact that some journalists looked to Twitter as a sign of what average citizens were thinking about the election or the presidential debates, but in many ways what they found was the same thing that used to exist with traditional media: namely, a consensus formed in part by smart political spin, amplified by other journalists using the social platform.

“Staffers on both campaigns also cited that journalists used Twitter as a proxy for public opinion to assess such things as the candidates’ debate performances. Both campaigns worked to create a ‘climate of opinion’ favorable to their candidate to influence reporters’ perceptions of political events as they read social media as a measure of public sentiment.”

As Derek Willis of the NYT’s Upshot pointed out in a post on the Kreiss research, clever tweets and pleas for support may momentarily influence actual voters to donate or take some other kind of action, but “the main audience for campaigns on Twitter is the people who write, talk and tweet about the campaigns for a living.” In other words, political reporters and their marketing counterparts within the campaigns themselves — the definition of an echo chamber.

So despite the focus on new technologies, whether social or mobile, the political and media landscape we have now isn’t really that different from the old days of newspaper editorials and columnists dictating the requirements of the news cycle — it’s just a lot faster than it used to be, and a lot more distributed. The only upside is that now we have thousands of potential outlets to choose from instead of just a few.

]]>If President Obama really wants to put Wi-Fi in every U.S. classroom, then the government will need to release more unlicensed spectrum for public use — or so says WifiForward, a spectrum lobbying group backed by Google, Microsoft, the cable companies and the Consumer Electronics Association.

WifiForward prepared a paper this week that calls for regulators to open up or lift restrictions on big swathes of the 5 GHz band so it can be used to build bigger, badder gigabit Wi-Fi networks. It also calls for the government to open up more white space spectrum and move forward with its plans to create a shared public-private band at 3.5 GHz, which could be used to link those Wi-Fi networks to the internet proper without using wires or fiber.

Obama is pushing an ambitious plan called ConnectEd to link 99 percent of all U.S. schools with high-speed broadband, and many tech companies like Apple and Microsoft and carriers like AT&T and Verizon have signed on as partners, pledging money, services and equipment to the effort. But WifiForward claims that if the administration wants to ConnectEd right, it needs to think in terms of very fat pipes.

A school of 1,000 students and staff needs at least a 1 Gbps broadband link to ensure every pupil and teacher has access to a 1 Mbps connection, according to a study by the State Educational Technology Directors Association that the paper cited. By 2018, there will be an estimated 56.5 million K-12 students in the U.S., and they will need a combined 56.5 Tbps of bandwidth. Those kind of capacities will require more spectrum than available today, WifiForward claims.

Of course, opening up more unlicensed spectrum wouldn’t just benefit schools, since that new capacity would be available to any company, organization or consumer using a Wi-Fi router. Emphasizing schools is a good way to pull on the public’s heartstrings, but WifiForward’s arguments are still valid. Unlicensed airwaves produced a tremendous amount of innovation around the world. Investing in more unlicensed technologies will keep that innovation going.

]]>It is now legal to unlock a cell phone in the United States. As promised, President Barack Obama signed the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act into law on Friday, the White House announced in a blog post. Previously, unlocking your phone — modifying its firmware — could be considered a violation of federal copyright law, although it was rarely enforced. If you want to celebrate by unlocking your device (without fear of a fine) here’s a handy tip sheet for all four big carriers’ policies and procedures.

Obama is almost certain to sign the bill. “The bill Congress passed today is another step toward giving ordinary Americans more flexibility and choice,” he said in a statement released on Friday. “I…look forward to signing this bill into law.”

Previously, unlocking phones in order to switch carriers could be considered a violation of federal copyright law, based on a provision in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Although that provision was designed to limit DRM cracking, it ended up applying to locked cell phones as well. In December, all four big carriers in the United States reached an agreement to make both prepaid and postpaid unlocking easier. The bill that passed the House protects those policies.

You might remember the House passing a version of this bill back in February. The ultimate version passed today is largely the same, but lacks one of the most controversial parts of the original: a short clause that prohibited unlocking “for the purpose of bulk resale.” That clause, which was intended to limit shady resellers or shops that unlock phones for a fee, was blasted by groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The bill originated as a citizen petition on the White House website and is a welcome consumer protection: after all, if you buy a device on a postpaid plan, you pay for it in installments and when your contract is up you should be able to plug a different carrier’s SIM card in it if you wish. However, when it becomes law it still won’t be permanent. Unless circumstances change, the rule will be reconsidered by the Library of Congress in 2015.

]]>On Friday, President Obama plans to announce a sweeping package of commitments — over 300 in total — from companies and government agencies to increase the deployment of solar panels, and make buildings more energy efficient. The announcements will take place at a Walmart in Mountain View, California. While the commitments are a far cry from the kind of financing that the green stimulus provided, the announcements are the latest way for Obama to highlight his attention to environmentalism, clean energy and climate change. Earlier this week, he released the massive climate change report.

One of the more symbolic announcements will be that the White House has finally managed to install solar panels on the first family’s residence, according to reports. To note, this was a discussion started four years ago. The White House had solar panels back in the 1970’s, installed by Jimmy Carter’s administration, but President Ronald Reagan removed them during his administration.

More substantial commitments in the package include large pledges by companies like Walmart, which says it will make 850 million square feet of its buildings more energy efficient and will double the number of solar projects at its U.S. stores. Health giant Kaiser says it will look into adding as much as 40 megawatts of solar projects at dozens of its hospitals in California.

Google — which has spent a massive amount on clean power projects over the years — is launching a contest with a $1 million prize for developing the next generation of smaller, better power inverters. Power inverters are big, clunky boxes that convert the direct current created by the solar panel into alternating current that can be used in the home. The contest is called the Little Box Challenge, and more details will be announced soon about how to enter.

Obama will announce a series of commitments from the federal government, including things like new conservation standards and more funds for energy efficiency upgrades. On the list:

Development of job training at community colleges for another 50,000 solar workers to enter the workforce by 2020

A pledge for more federal agencies to buy solar panel projects

Another $2 billion in energy efficiency upgrades for federal buildings (added to another $2 billion back in 2011)

A new program to replace more than 500,000 inefficient outdoor lights on poles across the U.S.

Two new energy efficiency conservation standards from the DOE, one for electric motors and one for walk-in coolers and freezers

New financing options for energy-efficiency and water-saving upgrades for affordable housing units

In addition to the new commitments, the Obama administration also released a report detailing the progress that’s been made so far around solar panels in the U.S. There were a record number of solar panels installed on rooftops in the U.S. in 2013.

The plan is yet to be formally announced and detailed, but reports in the last day or two point to a scenario where telecoms carriers will hold metadata on calls – descriptive data on who called whom and when, rather than the contents of calls – and the NSA will have to get a court order to search that archive for someone’s metadata.

“I am confident that it allows us to do what is necessary in order to deal the threat of a terrorist attack, but does so in a way that addresses people’s concerns,” Obama said at a news conference in The Hague in the Netherlands.

Who holds the key?

Obama said back in January that he was considering taking U.S. call metadata collection out of the NSA’s hands, and shifting the burden to the telcos was one of several options on the table at that point. The telcos already record metadata for their own purposes — right now the NSA is able to force them to hand it over in bulk, after which the agency has the technical ability to search through it with impunity.

The new system would be analogous to the European Union’s Data Retention Directive, which requires communications providers to hang onto metadata for up to 2 years, though it looks like the U.S. scheme won’t require retention beyond 18 months (the NSA hangs onto the data for up to 5 years). The EU directive, incidentally, was recently criticized by Europe’s top legal advisor for having insufficient privacy safeguards.

In a statement given through the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Snowden said Obama had confirmed that “these mass surveillance programs, kept secret from the public and defended out of reflex rather than reason, are in fact unnecessary and should be ended”:

“This is a turning point, and it marks the beginning of a new effort to reclaim our rights from the NSA and restore the public’s seat at the table of government.”

Meanwhile there are two competing bills in Congress that also aim to reform NSA metadata collection. The older one, the “USA Freedom Act”, would end bulk collection under Section 215 of the post-9/11 Patriot Act and limit NSA data requests to ongoing terrorism investigations. A new “End Bulk Collection Act”, from the House intelligence committee, would do what it says but, according to critics, allow more widespread metadata requests than are necessary.

Snowden seems to back the Freedom Act, though in his statement he referred to its reforms as “incomplete”.

Resetting the net

Of course, all these reported and potential reforms would only stifle one aspect of the NSA mass surveillance efforts; they wouldn’t affect the surveillance of everyone outside the U.S., and they wouldn’t stop those programs from scooping up communications between Americans and people in certain other countries.

A group called Fight For The Future is running a campaign called Reset The Net that aims to mark the first anniversary of that story, on June 5th, with a mass outbreak of cryptography. After all, there were always going to be two main avenues to fixing this mass surveillance mess: better policy, and encryption as far as the eye can see (as long as it allows a decent user experience).

]]>This week both the President and the Federal Communications Commission made a big push for unlicensed spectrum that could boost capacity on our Wi-Fi networks and fuel new services for consumers that rely on the free-to-use airwaves. Unlike the licensed spectrum mobile carriers use in their 3G and 4G networks, unlicensed spectrum is open to any device with a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi radio — and it’s long been the subject of a caustic political debate.

In the White House’s 2014 Economic Report, the Obama Administration called out the unlicensed airwaves as a key economic driver, used not just by companies looking to bypass cellular networks but also by mobile carriers themselves. The FCC and the administration are trying to create a more open regulatory environment that would make it easier to open up new spectrum for unlicensed use, often through sharing it with other users, the report said.

Obama and new FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (right). Source: White House

The issue that will have a more immediate impact on consumers, however, was an item that appeared on the FCC’s docket for its March 31 open meeting. The commission will consider an order that would open up the 100 MHz in the 5 GHz band to widespread Wi-Fi use. Technically the band is already unlicensed, but it has a lot of restrictions to prevent interference with the satellite operators that use it. Last week, Globalstar lifted its objections to sharing the airwaves with more active Wi-Fi networks.

Technically 100 MHz is only a 15 percent increase over the amount of unlicensed spectrum available to Wi-Fi today, but those additional airwaves would be key to tapping the capabilities of new technologies like 802.11ac, which uses massive swaths of frequencies to deliver faster wireless broadband links. The first gigabit wireless products are starting to emerge, but making use of those capabilities are largely dependent on gaining access to larger chunks of spectrum.

Source: Shutterstock / iconmonstr

This 100 MHz could be added to another 195 MHz of nearby spectrum the FCC is proposing for unlicensed use, which could mean we’ll see a huge expansion of the 5 GHz band beyond its current 550 MHz real estate. That opens up its potential not just for Wi-Fi but future radio technologies that could make use of that capacity. Remember, Bluetooth started out piggybacking on unlicensed frequencies in the 2.4 GHz and it has become a huge driver for new applications, including the internet of things. The FCC is looking at new lower-frequency bands for new unlicensed technologies like white spaces broadband.

The change in attitude toward unlicensed frequencies is subtle but significant. Washington – in particular Congress – has no love for free-to-use airwaves because it doesn’t generate the billions of dollars in revenues for federal coffers that a licensed spectrum auction could. The mobile industry lobby is also a powerful one, and though carriers are beginning to lean on Wi-Fi as an offload technology, its core mission is pretty straightforward: identify as much spectrum for licensed use as possible.

Source: AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac

The tech industry is getting firmly behind unlicensed with the realization that so many of their services are dependent on sharing data via technologies like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Google, Microsoft, the Consumer Electronics Association and other tech players recently formed an organization WifiForward to lobby for more free-to-use spectrum, and they’ve recruited some unlikely allies. Comcast and Time Warner Cable are both founding members, and the cable industry’s lobbying arm, the National Cable & Telecom Association, was key to negotiating a compromise with Globalstar about shared use of this new 100 MHz swath.

The cable operators involvement in this issue is important politically, but it might become even more meaningful to the consumer as they ramp up their cable Wi-Fi build. The cable guys have tried to become mobile carriers before, but they’ve failed at every turn. Lately though, they’ve been adopting Wi-Fi en masse as a means of connecting their broadband customers wirelessly when away from home. If they can’t play the carrier game, they figure they can play the anti-carrier game. It’s very likely they’ll try to use those new networks to offer services similar to those of a mobile operator’s in the future.

Paul Revere was a spy and a patriot. We used to spy from balloons! We spied a lot in World War II, which was good, and also in the Cold War, but not like the East Germans. We spied on our activists, which was bad. We won the Cold War, then 9/11 happened and we had to start spying on everyone.

Our spies work hard and are good at networking. I was against warrantless wiretapping when Bush was president. The worst excesses happened under Bush. We’re really good at spying. Seriously, better than anyone else when you think about it, which we do. The spy agencies are always going to want more power, and no one’s supposed to talk about it.

I maintain a healthy skepticism but there’s no way I’m going to stop these programs, as nobody has told me they’re breaking the rules. Our spies always stick to the rules except when they don’t, and did I mention they’re hardworking patriots? Sometimes they get stressed out.

I was actually going to do something about something anyway, even before Snowden. Who let that happen? The reporting has been sensationalist and has hurt us in ways we can’t think of yet. Now we have to get everyone to trust us again. I’ve asked lots of people what I should do. I work hard too.

We have to spy. Other countries are being hypocritical. They spy too, though obviously not as well as us. Sometimes our spies get freaked out by their own power. We must have higher standards than the online ad industry. I keep thinking about Martin Luther King. We spied on him a lot.

So here’s what I’m going to do: assess how badly this is hurting us, and get those spies to keep me more in the loop. We’ve already become more transparent, especially after those lawsuits. We’re going to regularly think about telling people what the spies are doing. Someone will also get to play devil’s advocate in our secret court from time to time.

When we force a company to turn over its customers’ data, we will no longer keep that secret forever, except when we do. Some people want a judge to get involved every time we target someone, but we shouldn’t give terrorists more rights than ordinary criminals.

Mass surveillance might have stopped 9/11, and it might stop something else one day. We’ve never had a debate about collecting all this data, and I’m glad we’ve had this one. Nobody’s ever proven that the phone call database has been deliberately abused, but it certainly got a lot of negative publicity, so we’re going to tweak that program.

We’ll still collect phone data on everyone, but someone else will have to hold it and we’re going to look at less of it. While things are changing, that particular database will only be used in an emergency or when a judge allows it.

Foreigners should remember we’re the good guys. We only spy on bad people. We’re not going to stop spying on everyone everywhere — just a few foreign leaders — but we are going to hold the data for less time and restrict its use.

It hurts that everyone thinks we don’t have the purest motives. It’s not like we’re China or Russia. We invented the internet.

]]>Barack Obama will announce on Friday that he intends to take telephony metadata out of the hands of the National Security Agency, according to a Reuters report about a scheduled speech by the President on NSA reform. The report suggests Obama has heeded some of the calls made by an advisory panel in December, but it remains unclear who will hold this metadata. Intelligence agencies will also need a “judicial finding” in order to query the database, according to the report, and Obama will apparently scale back surveillance of foreign leaders and for the first time put a public advocate into the secret court process that governs surveillance targeting.

]]>The weekend brought a spate of updates in the ongoing NSA saga. German media reported that Barack Obama had known about the tapping of Angela Merkel’s phone for years despite claiming he hadn’t, prompting fresh denials from Washington. Der Spiegel also published a detailed look at the American agency’s Berlin spying tactics.